Combinatorial effects of transposable elements on gene expression and phenotypic robustness in Drosophila melanogaster development.

ABSTRACT: Embryonic patterning displays remarkable consistency from individual to individual despite frequent environmental perturbations and diverse genetic contexts. Stochastic influences on the cellular environment may cause transcription rates to fluctuate, but these fluctuations rarely lead to developmental defects or disease. Here we characterize a set of recessive alleles of the Toll pathway component tube that destabilize embryonic dorsoventral patterning in Drosophila melanogaster. Females bearing these tube alleles generate embryos of an unusually wide range of dorsalized phenotypes, with the distributions across this range being unique for each allele. We determine that the mutant lines have in common a retrotransposon insertion upstream of the tube transcription start site. Genetic and m

SUBMITTER: Clemmons AW 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3755913 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature